Why Britain Needs A Win-Win Scenario with a Soft Brexit

Britain will inevitably exit (‘Brexit’) the European Union (EU) in late March 2019. The socio-economic cost of a hard Brexit will be detrimentally high because the British Isles will be excluded from the single European market. The consequent decline in British living standards will be so detrimental that the election of Jeremy Corbyn Labour government will become a viable option.

Under a Corbyn government Britain will transition to a politically correct dictatorship in which Ulster is unilaterally abandoned to Sinn Fein and Scotland is encouraged to secede. The consequent English/Welsh rump state will become a dictatorship which is economically dependent on a mercantilist People’s Republic of China (PRC).

A prelude to establishing such a British republican dictatorship will be to introduce a written constitution in which royal governmental prerogatives are transferred to the parliamentary speaker as occurred in *Sweden in 1975. This abolition of royal prerogatives will only be a stop-gap before the British monarchy is entirely abolished along with the socio-political freedoms which the conventions of a constitutional monarchy facilitate and guarantee.

(*Sweden has neither transitioned to a dictatorship nor a republic due to the respective democratic orientation of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the continuing popularity of the Swedish royal family. It is questionable as to whether Corbyn’s Marxist supporters within the Labour Party have a similar commitment to democracy and constitutional monarchy).

Preventative Maintenance via a Soft Brexit

To avoid this political horror scenario of a Corbyn government Britain needs a soft Brexit by which this nation remains within the EU’s single market. It is therefore ironic that some of the advocates of a hard Brexit are Euro-sceptics within the Conservative Party. Do these Eurosceptic Tories not realise that the essence of a market economy as envisaged by the great Scottish eighteenth century moral philosopher Adam Smith depends upon producers having access to markets in accordance with the principles of supply and demand?

Margaret Thatcher understood that prosperity could not be achieved unless Britain had access to the single market of continental Europe. For this reason Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1970s opposed the leader of the Labour Party’s hard left Tony Benn (to whom Corbyn is the philosophical and ideological successor) by advocating that Britain join the then European Economic Community (EEC).

The later hostility of the late 1980s of Britain’s first female prime minister toward the EU was based upon this entity evolving into a supra state in which power is transferred to unelected Brussels bureaucrats at the expence of British democracy. This Thaterchist antipathy toward the emergence of a nascent European supra state was not surprising because Britain had never been subjected to Napoleonic rule of the early nineteenth century. The juridical, legal and cultural impacts of this Napoleonic legacy have been so profound and enduring for continental Europe that Britain will always find it challenging to wholeheartedly integrate with the EU.

Therefore a soft-Brexit offers Britain the best of both worlds when it comes to the question of maintaining economic and political connections with continental Europe. This is because Britain by continuing to belong to a single European market (in which there is a free flow of people between continental Europe and the British Isles) will remain within the EU power house. At the same time by Britain not formally remaining within the EU will be immune from Brussels bureaucrats attempting to usurp the functions of British courts and legislatures.

Let the British People Decide Between Either Win-Win or a Lose-Lose Outcome

It should be appreciated that a soft Brexit offers Britain a ‘win-win’ scenario of both belonging to a single European market while still retaining its social, political and economic independence. British parliamentarians can still vote in favour for a soft Brexit but with the escape clause that there be a referendum to approve Prime Minister Theresa May’s ‘win-win’ agreement with the EU.

Holding another referendum will not violate the spirit of the 2016 vote in favour of ‘leave’. This will be because the decision for Britain to depart from the EU will not be challenged. Rather the decision to be put to the British people will be between a soft and hard Brexit which respectively correlates with deciding between a ‘win-win’ outcome or a ‘lose-lose’ scenario.